


contract and mistake

by zenelly



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Pre-Slash, the feelings are very real, this is the start of something terrible and wonderful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 14:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20009731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenelly/pseuds/zenelly
Summary: “You said you had Business with Me,” Natsume says, crossing his legs at the ankle and leaning back. Their drinks arrive and Natsume swirls his tea with begrudging approval. “Impress me, Tenshouin. What do you require my help For?”Eichi smiles. He folds his hands beneath his chin and meets Natsume’s eyes squarely. “I want to date you.”For ESO Round 2!!





	contract and mistake

**Author's Note:**

> This one was for a prompt of "EiNatsu, first kiss or confession!" 
> 
> This sort of grew legs on me because i realized that the best way for these two to get together is to .... give them a reason to be together? because it's eichi and it's natsume and they could never be straightforward. Ever. I want this to be much longer than it is, and if i think about it, i might come back and write the continuation of how they end up five months down the line, terrifyingly in love and ready to murder anyone who mentions it.

By the time Natsume gets to the café, he’s convinced himself that this entire situation is some sort of elaborate joke. It has to be, right? There’s no other explanation that makes sense. No other reason why he would be here, entering the small upscale coffee shop with clammy palms and his temper already sparking.

No other reason for Eichi Tenshouin to be sitting at a booth with a serene smile on his face, just as he said he’d be.

(Not _that_ much of a joke, then.)

“I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve taken the liberty of ordering for us both,” Eichi announces as soon as Natsume is within hearing distance, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Natsume would have to explain himself to Tsumugi (a top five in “things Natsume never wants to do”) then he would walk right out this instant.

As it is, Natsume swallows his irritation, reminds himself that Wataru-niisan sees _something_ in this aggravating piece of shit, and sits down across the booth from Eichi. “You won’t hear a Thank You from me unless you get the order Right.”

“Of course, Natsume-kun.”

“You said you had Business with Me,” Natsume says, crossing his legs at the ankle and leaning back. Their drinks arrive and Natsume swirls his tea with begrudging approval. “Impress me, Tenshouin. What do you require my help For?”

Eichi smiles. He folds his hands beneath his chin and meets Natsume’s eyes squarely. “I want to date you.”

* * *

It takes fifteen minutes, a refill of his tea, and a mostly genuine, if laughing, apology from Eichi before Natsume is calm enough to hear the rest. It isn’t a joke. Eichi wants to get rid of the dating ban on idols and has decided that the best way to show they can do without it is to live the example himself. His exact reasoning for picking Natsume as his partner is beyond him at this point. Natsume sputters through the explanation, through the reasoning, through Eichi’s laughter.

If he didn’t also think the dating ban was cruel, he would have just left.

As it is, he narrows his eyes. This is ridiculous. “What makes you so sure that I will help You?”

“I will admit,” Eichi says, voice smooth, his blond lashes fanning against his cheeks and something distressingly earnest in his eyes, “you were the first person who came to mind.”

“Oh? I’m surprised you haven’t consulted your Right Hand for a scheme like This.”

Eichi’s smile gains a jagged and delighted edge, his gaze sharpening into boundless, ravenous blue. “Keito would never agree to this. You, on the other hand, are vicious in a way I’ve always admired, and this can only work to mutual benefit.”

“Can It?” Natsume asks dryly, but his mind is racing. Eichi Tenshouin is difficult to read at the best of times and nearly impossible when he’s actually _trying_ to obscure his intensions. He may not be. There is still something nearly honest about the way he’s speaking, as though it is actually important that _Natsume_ is the one involved in this, but…

Natsume will blame this on curiositlater, on the burn of competitiveness that always lurks in his veins.

“I’m listening.”

Eichi-

Eichi, the bastard, reaches across the table to take Natsume’s hand. “We have paparazzi outside.”

“A premier idol and heir to a vast Fortune telling empire does tend to attract Attention. Oh, and I suppose they Might be here for you Too.”

“There’s no time like the present to begin.” Eichi slowly strokes Natsume’s hand, gentle and teasing, and Natsume feels it zinging through his nerves. “Do we have a deal?”

Natsume swallows the urge to snatch his hand back, allowing Eichi to run his thumb across his knuckles as they lock eyes. A viper watching a viper, both of them swaying, Natsume thinks with no small amount of amusement. Somewhere out there, Tsumugi is sighing to himself about their similarities all over again, and the mental comparison alone has him twitching, forcing himself to blink slow and deliberate.

“What do You get out of This?”

“You mean besides freedom? I just think,” Eichi says, ignoring Natsume’s muttered comment of “Don’t hurt yourself with that” with a benign sort of benevolence, “that we can work together on this. The two of us together… It would be mutually beneficial.”

“So it would be a play to Disrupt things as Always.”

And Eichi smiles, slow and treacherous and Natsume is abruptly reminded that Trickstar was not the first to stage a revolution in Yumenosaki, that this man organized so much behind the scenes in the hopes they would pan out and took absolute control when it was already far too late to turn around. “I merely think that the dating ban is harmful and there is only so much they can do to either of us. What do you say? For the happiness of our peers?”

“As if that has ever Been a concern of Yours.” Natsume regards their still-joined hands, the face of a man whose ruthlessness he has hated even as he understood it. He thinks of the aching loneliness in Sora’s eyes when he’s unable to show Hinata the affection he wants to, the twirl of Tsumugi’s fingers around his hair as he talks about love, eyes distant and yearning.

Breathes out.

“Fine. But we are setting up Rules.”

Eichi pulls Natsume’s hand close to brush a kiss across the backs of the fingers, and Natsume’s traitorous heart _does not_ skip a beat. “I find that acceptable.”

“Rule one,” Natsume snaps, finally pulling his hand free, several minutes after it became a relevant issue. “If we kiss in Public, which we’re going to have To, you always ask permission First.”

Darting a glance sideways, Eichi’s smile does not falter. “Care to follow that rule then? Our adoring public has arrived, and we have to break the story somehow.”

When the first few flashes go off, they catch Natsume sliding out of his booth, looking as though nothing more than a business meeting has ended. The next get Natsume coming around the table. Grabbing Eichi by the chin. They miss Natsume’s momentary hesitation, the way his eyes search Eichi’s for permission, and Eichi’s subtle nod.

They also miss Natsume murmuring, “This had better Work, Tenshouin.”

With a smile, Eichi curls his hand around Natsume’s cheek. His skin is cold despite the warmth of the tea in front of them. “It will.”

* * *

Their first kiss makes headlines.

In the privacy of his own home, Natsume presses his fingers to his mouth, feeling them tingle with remembered sensation. Eichi had kissed firmly, tilting his face to the side, mouth still sweet from his drink. He hadn’t just kissed once, but rather a slow press of many, many times, testing until he found just the right angle, and a low heat pools in Natsume’s stomach at the memory. He’s in over his head. How much, he doesn’t know just yet.

It’s just Tenshouin, though. It’s just a publicity stunt. For the sake of their peer’s happiness. Nothing more.

So he’s dating Eichi Tenshouin now. That’s something he’s going to have to explain.

(But, as he runs the whorls of his fingerprints over his lower lip again, Natsume admits to himself and himself only that Eichi has never been easy for him to predict.

Has he always been this compelling? Has Natsume missed it this whole time?

He can mention none of this to Tsumugi. He would never hear the end of it.)


End file.
